SALT TOWN STUDIO

The Story

Why do you offer your designs for free?

Good question. Sounds a little suspicious doesn't it? I mean, so what's the catch?

To tell you the truth, in August of 2010 I put up a site called RetroZing and set out to sell my retro scrapbooking kits. I was very optimistic that people would bust down my virtual door to give me money for my designs. "The site will run itself and money will come pouring in", I told myself. ->insert crickets' chirping

Almost a year later I had sold two kits for a grand total of $6.99 from two dear strangers (a shout out to you if you are reading this). In the meantime I had put up seven or eight kits on the site and I was thoroughly enjoying the whole design process. I realized this wasn't going to be a money maker but the satisfaction it provided me caused me take a step back and evaluate the situation. I could take down the site, store my designs on a hard drive for my grandchildren to find 50 years from now or I could offer everything for free and share them to be used and enjoyed now. I decided to keep the site up, but renamed it to Salt Town Studio in honor of my salty city.

My motives are not totally altruistic. My designs are mostly a byproduct of me experimenting with colors, challenging myself with new techniques, wondering if, for example, I can figure out how to draw a reindeer or an owl with some character or humor. It was fascinating to me, when I was designing my Must Love Pets collection, that using a basic dog body template and just adding long ears vs. short or square jowls vs. a pointed snout can so readily change the dog from schnauzer to hound. I have no deadlines - I can create when I feel creative, and not having to pay business taxes is always a benefit when tax season comes around.

I suppose if my site traffic reaches thousands per day (right now I average about 150 per day) I could start selling ads on my site to make money, but I like a clean, uncluttered site. I want this to be a good experience for everyone and as long as I'm successful with that my designs will always be free. :)

Lori Jensen

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah with my husband and two daughters and I'm a design geek! By day I'm a PHP Web Developer at the University of Utah, but I have loads of creative verve coursing through my veins. Swirls of colors and ideas dance between my lines of code! So by night I do my best to bring those ideas to life. I have loved scrapbooking since I was in 7th grade when there was no such thing as a personal computer and Mrs. Grossman's stickers by the yard were the only form of page decor. As soon as PC's could run a program like Adobe Photoshop, I was making digital pages so that I could print out more than one page to give to family and friends. About 7 years ago, I started playing around with Adobe Illustrator to make my own designs and I haven't looked back.